For your mingling pleasure, five local news items to get today’s culinary conversations started:

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1.Seattle Met’s Allecia Vermillion last week reported that Knee High Stocking Co. vet Gregg Holcomb plans to open Witness, a church-themed cocktail bar, in Capitol Hill before the end of June. The menu includes a “cocktail that pays tribute to fiery 18th-century preacher and sermon master Jonathan Edwards,” and since Seattle Met didn’t ask Holcomb for his recipe, we asked the nation’s foremost Jonathan Edwards scholar was belonged in the drink. “I would say red wine,” e-mails Harry C. Stout, the Jonathan Edwards Professor of Christianity at Yale, general editor of the Works of Jonathan Edwards and director of the Jonathan Edwards Center. According to Stout, Edwards was fond of claret and madeira. HIs father distilled apple brandy, but chocolate was the morning drink of choice in the household.

2. Jonathan Edwards knew something about whipping a crowd into a frenzy, which means he probably would have appreciated Din Tai Fung, the Taiwanese dumpling house that’s inspired devotees to wait hours for a seat at its Bellevue branch. Those patient XLB lovers were surely thrilled Friday morning when Seattle Times’ Rebekah Denn broke the news that the restaurant’s coming to University Village: The 9000-square foot location is scheduled to open in November.

3. Registration is open for Tom Douglas’ summer culinary camp, a five-day event featuring meals, demos and field trips led by many of the Pacific Northwest’s top culinary luminaries, including Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi; John Sundstrom; Jason Franey; John Gorham; and Gabrielle and Greg Denton. Should you have $3000 to spare, you can sign up here.

4. Sounders players next Tuesday, May 14 are trading their rave green jerseys for server coats at Met Grill. The steakhouse is sponsoring its annual Celebrity Waiters Night to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation; patrons are asked to make reservations for the event, which runs from 6:30 p.m.-8 p.m.

5. Pike Brewing Company’s Women in Beer event, which last year raised $1000 for Planned Parenthood, returns to the brewery next Monday, May 13. Tickets to the event, which features drinks and food samples from dozens of women-owned businesses, are $35.